Thursday, October 27, 2011

The first 3 were all 8.5 x 11 in. and this one was 18 x 24 in. Here's a poopy pic of them all lined up and smiling like neighbors. Click to Enlarge.

Etsy orders have been keeping me massively busy this past week and it looks like they're gonna continue to do so for the next couple days, but I'm hoping to post some new Nuggets strips this weekend. Two new buttons are ready and should be up today (Thurs, if the time stamp can be believed) or Friday.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The guy in the lime green suit is Triste, which means "sad" in Spanish (kinda simple but I liked the way it sounded as a name, so it stuck). As the word and color scheme implies, he spends a lot of time being a sour depressive.

Click to enlarge. I only just noticed that when Blogger pulls it up in one of those black pop-up zoom things, you can click on the picture link in the bottom-left corner to go straight to the full-size version.

This is the Romantic, a character that's made tons of appearances in my sketchbook lately. I just participated in my first non-student art gallery show this past Saturday, and the four pieces I submitted all feature this guy. I'll post all four over the next few days. The deal is that the guy is constantly euphoric and in love with life/people/etc, but he's also always bleeding profusely. Apparently some people don't quite understand what that's all about. Dunno, maybe it says something about my own personal experiences with love and happiness, but I thought the whole "romance-meets-horrific wounds" was completely self-explanatory.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Click to enlarge.
Text reads:
It hurts a lot when the horns come in, but after a while... okay, they're always going to hurt a little, but you get used to it. the ache is a companion animal that you pet and feed. inconvenient but it eases the loneliness.

Couple notes: the whole "we're-growing-horns" thing is meant more as a myth/fantasy vibe, not a Christian devil/evil vibe. Also, I owe the female horned person an apology. She looked okay, but then I over-worked her eyebrow and mouth and now she looks like a smudgy Neanderthal version of her former self. The lesson I learned in all of this was, "If you're going to work with permanent art mediums and no draft lines, don't fuck up."

A couple people have asked me what I used to get the grayscale effect in drawings like the ones above. I use these Pigma 2mm chisel tip graphic pens. They spit out a ton of ink, so I draw on paper with low absorption and then push the ink around with my fingers. It's a lot of messy fun, but since it's ink, it's permanent and easy to accidentally give people Neanderthal faces if you're not careful.

Click to enlarge.
Text reads:
Giant: WHO IS THIS MAN THAT CONSIDERS HIMSELF A GIANT?!
Human: I guess that would be me, sir.
Giant: AND WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO MAKE SUCH A DECISION?
Human: It's not about having the 'right', sir, but you giants are strong and live your lives unimpeded by small obstacles.
Giant: SMALL OBSTACLES ARE FOR THE SMALL.
Human: That's totally correct, sir, and because of my size, I am prone to trip and find harm from these things that, to you, are inconsequential.
Giant: THEY AFFECT US NOT.
Human: Yes, and even if I have to be affected by them, I don't want to worry about them any longer. My life is as short as I am, sir, and I'd like to spend as little of it as possible fretting over the hard parts. I figured if I thought myself a giant and nobody was hurt by my actions, life would be a little easier.
Giant: GIANTS SMASH SMALL HARDSHIPS.
Human: Yes, and it's exactly that kind of life-affirming certainty that I'd like to bring into my standard of living.
Giant: SMALL LIKE BUG, SQUISH ALL COMPLICATION.
Human: Exactly, "small like bug, squish all complication." This is good advice and I'm hungry to learn anything else you're willing to teach me.
Giant: UM, UM, BONES GOOD TOOLS; EVENING AIR TAKE SMELL FROM BLOOD.
Human: Thank you, sir.

Friday, October 21, 2011

text reads:
Red Riding Hood: My, what vicious cold-hearted criticism you have of my life choices, Grandma!
Grandma: The better to help you see the error of your ways, my dear!
Red Riding Hood: I hope the wolf gets here soon and eats you.
Grandma: What was that, dear?
Red Riding Hood: I said: I HOPE THE WOLF GETS HERE SOON AND EATS YOU.

In other news, I've been working all this past week on artwork for a gallery show coming up tomorrow evening. I'll post pics of at least the art sometime in the next few days once everything settles down.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Blogspot tries to open a smaller than actual size pic in a pop-up thing when you click on it, so the full-sized image can be found here.
[transcribed because my handwriting is poopy]

Perspectives of the respective parties:

Family: "We loved that little house on the cliff. But when it'd storm, we were never sure if the god/monster that surfaced was there to kill us or keep us safe from the weather. So we moved."

Monster: "I used to get really lonely when it rained. So I had a tendency to get drunk and seek out company. I was fascinated by the family that lived on the cliff. Such love. Such unity. The people that live there now are a bunch of pricks."

This is the last of the super old Nuggets strips previously seen on Myspace, I think. I hope.

It's funny to think about Myspace. Like all the drama of Facebook, but with enough glittery animated gifs to choke any respectable web browser. There were some articles a couple years back noting social networking segregation (another one here) and how people were still dividing themselves racially, culturally, and economically between Myspace and Facebook. Is this still the case or have most people simply moved on to Facebook now, leaving Myspace for musicians and comedians?

Saturday, October 8, 2011

If I was a superhero, I don't know if I could resist singing my own theme song.

The zombie-like creature below isn't a zombie. It's a splicer from Bioshock, one of my favorite videogames. If you're unfamiliar, the whole story is like an Ayn Rand novel gone terribly awry. A group of Laissez-faire capitalists build a utopian Atlantis in the middle of the ocean where they're free to live without the restrictions of government, and then everything spirals into chaos as greed and sociopathic entitlement consume everything. Weee!! But it's all wrapped up in a really fun and super creepy action/shooter game. You'll see a reference to the Fountainhead in the page below- I'm not gonna open that can of worms more than I already have here, but suffice it to say that I have strong mixed feelings in regard to Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

No? You wouldn't like to try the lotion? What about these all-natural bathing sea salts? They'll make you younger. How about this make-up to cover up your face? It'll make you younger. All I need is five minutes to play with your hair, spruce it up, put some curls in it or something. It'll make you younger. Spend $50 and I'll throw in the lotion as an added bonus, a $30 value, absolutely free.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

I was drawing a grim reaper nugget for a bit and while I'd like to say it was so I could explore complicated feelings of mortality, it was probably more because I thought the little guy with a skull head was adorable:

I can't tell if the impulse to draw morbid ghost creatures is a result of a Catholic upbringing, my own natural inclination, or a combination of the two, but here are the only 2 strips (I think) that ended up featuring the bugger.

It's weird seeing all these old strips again. While I used to think they were entertaining, I've grown so accustomed to them that I can no longer tell if they're worth a damn. So there's good news if they suck: there aren't tons left that I have to unload before getting to the newer stuff. ...which might still suck, but the excitement makes me less convinced of their awfulness.

Monday, October 3, 2011

it's hard to go through the heaviest bits and walk out still feelin like an attractive human being, but we do what we can to smile and flirt, catch each other's glances through half-broken smiles and quick wincing faces.

but most of us are still here and there's this girl down the way groovin on a boy further down the way. And we got to talkin and she told me that faith was always a sticking point between them. And not that we've all been through a shared blanket hell, she said she doesn't want his god to die, but her fingers are crossed that his god has shifted in personality enough to let her sweet and sensitive crush be disappointed, and maybe reevaluate what god means to him, and maybe readjust his heart to allow room to love more than the contradictory fuckwad that lives only in the tattered book sitting next to the boy's bed.

It's a fine time for fresh starts. The water has receded and there are enough signs of life to lose count. Strangely there are no doves carrying olive branches. They are pigeons and native birds mostly, but we wake up early and we hug freely. There are callouses on every finger.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

The round character used as my Etsy profile pic and seen in the banner above is from a comic strip I've been doing since something like 2003 called Nuggets. They're supposed to be little chicks, but more important than what they are is the fact that they're super easy to draw. I absolutely love making comic strips + I don't have the patience to repeatedly draw something elaborate = Nuggets.

They started as a joke on a homemade greeting card, then they turned into something I drew at work to amuse myself and co-workers, and then they kind of spread into every other creative outlet I could get my impatient fingers on. I'm sure there are Nuggets cussing at each other on graded tests I've submitted to professors. I don't remember being penalized for that, but I could be wrong. Anyway.

Because I've been making them for so long, there's a large collection of strips. I posted a handful on a Myspace page way back when, and I want to flush those out before getting to newer stuff, but check back often! There are a ton more to come.

The New Philosophy

In Cold Blood

Press Start to Continue (EDIT- looks like Blogger resized the original because the image file was too long, so I'm breaking it up into 2 pages. If anybody is savvy with Blogger and can teach me how to tell it to leave my image files the hell alone, I'd be grateful. Thanks!)

I keep a daily sketchbook/journal. The little thing is my constant, faithful companion, and it absorbs all the messy bits of mental stuff that come dripping, sneezing out of my brain and onto the page. If you yourself are creative, I highly recommend maintaining a daily sketchbook or journal. It's a ton of fun and it provides others with the chance to judge you when you just as easily could've kept your thoughts to yourself with nobody being the wiser.

I will now share some of my brain sneezes with you. These are gonna be all over the place chronologically, but dates (if known) will be stamped in the bottom-left corner.

On the plane to San Francisco. I don't have the steadiest hand to begin with, but if this seems super unsteady, it might be because the plane was taxiing long enough that I pulled out my sketchbook and fired this page off to relieve the boredom. Bonus for the day: the first time I probably ever spelled "San Francisco" correctly in my entire life:

I'm not sure how Blogger handles larger files, so if you click on the pic below and it expands but not big enough that you can see it well, right-click and select "View Image".

I usually avoid sarcasm, but in case anybody wants to try and pull this drawing out of context, I wanna be clear that Emperor Union is satire. Half of this nation seems to believe that there's a scary socialist boogieman out there that will obliterate the universe if the American workforce is able to fight for the rights won by our great grandparents. Which is silly.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I'm trying to iron out the kinks of this blogspot thing, so if you have any suggestions or recommendations on what I can do to make it run smoother, I'd love to hear all about it!

why, hello!

I'm an artist born, raised, and currently tromping around in Grand Rapids, MI. When I'm not filling orders, I enjoy drawing, writing, reading, biking, dancing when appropriate, and recreational screaming-at-the-heavens.